206 
VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. 
CHAP. VJII. 
minister is now generously supported by the people amongst 
whom he labours. Sunday, February the 11th, was ushered 
in by a meeting for prayer at sunrise. At the forenoon ser¬ 
vice many more attended than could gain admission to the 
chapel; and about two hundred communicants afterwards 
united in partaking of the Lord’s Supper. Their serious and 
earnest attention during the services of the day afforded me 
much satisfaction. In the afternoon we proceeded to Dysals- 
dorp, eighteen miles distant, where a large congregation met 
for public worship in the evening. 
On Monday the 12th, after an important meeting with the 
people of the place, Mr. Thompson and I took leave of Mr. 
Anderson and his sister, grateful for the hospitality and kind¬ 
ness we had received. We next directed our course towards 
the Karroo, or desert, which we had to pass before reaching 
Graaf-Reinet. In order to relieve our horses as much as pos¬ 
sible we sent them on three days’journey, that they might be 
better prepared for the most difficult part of the route. Fol¬ 
lowing with oxen we reached the place where they had been 
waiting on Wednesday night, and on Thursday morning, after 
ascending a sort of defile, called De Beers Port, we entered 
the Karroo. About noon we came to a pool of muddy water, 
near a solitary house, where we halted to rest, and to give our 
horses water; the last we expected to obtain for them until 
the desert was passed. A Dutch New Testament was received 
with expressions of thankfulness by the mistress of this soli¬ 
tary dwelling, who refused any payment for -the water for our 
horses, or milk for ourselves. In about an hour we departed, 
and were now traversing the desert, bordered on the side by 
which we had entered with low barren hills, but stretching 
away to the eastward and northward, as far as the eye could 
reach, in one dreary, treeless waste, with only here and there 
a very distant hill looming in the horizon.. 
The soil of this desert is hard-baked reddish earth, level 
rock, or gritty sand and loose stones. The only vegetation 
